07 June 2017

Where does this lead ...

Theresa May has declared she is prepared to rip up human rights laws to impose new restrictions on terror suspects, as she sought to gain control over the security agenda just 36 hours before the polls open.

The prime minister said she was looking at how to make it easier to deport foreign terror suspects and how to increase controls on extremists where it is thought they present a threat but there is not enough evidence to prosecute them.

The last-ditch intervention comes after days of pressure on May over the policing cuts and questions over intelligence failures, following terror attacks on London Bridge, She said: “But I can tell you a few of the things I mean by that: I mean longer prison sentences for people convicted of terrorist offences. I mean making it easier for the authorities to deport foreign terror suspects to their own countries.

“And I mean doing more to restrict the freedom and the movements of terrorist suspects when we have enough evidence to know they present a threat, but not enough evidence to prosecute them in full in court.

“And if human rights laws stop us from doing it, we will change those laws so we can do it.”

Human rights legislation is there to protect the public from an overweening government. The kind of government that says it is entitled to take legal action against individuals because it thinks those individuals may be dangerous, without having to prove its case in court. So the government can lock up or penalise anyone it chooses. Throughout the centuries, the dream of totalitarians.

And it is wholly unlikely to discourage malcontents from using vehicles or knives to injure innocent bystanders.